“Language is worth a thousand pounds a word”

S This paper studies the following axiom: ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ through a series of 11 theses and 16 propositions. It takes as proof an extract from Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956). The author suggests that if brevity is the source of wit thanks to a process of interpellation, this opens the way to a novel philosophy of language, one which centers on the linguistic agon , in which the primary function of language is not to communicate information but to exert a force that interpellates subjects in the respective positions in which they find themselves. Cette contribution examine l'axiome suivant : « brevity is the soul of wit » , au travers de 11 thèses et 16 propositions qui s'appuient sur une analyse d'un extrait du roman de Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956). L'auteur montre que si brevity entraîne wit par une opération d’interpellation, cela engage une autre philosophie du langage que l’habituelle ou la dominante — une philosophie du langage centrée sur l’agonistique, dans laquelle la première fonction du langage n’est de

"Language is worth a thousand pounds a word" Jean-Jacques Lecercle 1 Axiom (kindly provided by the editors): Brevity is the soul of wit.
2 Thesis 1. The following text will not simply develop the axiom, it will embody it. As a consequence, it will be composed of (empirical) propositions, which will help formulate a problem, and of (theoretical) theses that will sketch a solution, excluding all forms of digression, development or explanation.
3 Proposition 1. Here is a text: Harris is a fellar who likes to play ladeda, and he like English customs and things, he does be polite and say thank you and he does get up on the bus and the tube to let woman sit down, which is a thing even them Englishmen don't do. And when he dress, you think is some Englishman going to work in the city, bowler and umbrella, and briefcase tuck under the arm, with The Times fold up in the pocket so the name would show, and he walking upright like if he is alone who alive in the world. Only thing, Harris face black. (Selvon 103) 4 Proposition 2. This is a passage from The Lonely Londoners (1956), a novel by Sam Selvon, an early example of a diasporic novel-one of the earliest, but also undoubtedly one of the best. 5 Proposition 3. The novel tells the story of the difficult integration, in the mid-fifties, of the first wave of West Indian immigrants, in a not so welcoming London (hence the title). Among a host of characters, Harris takes this need to integrate to its extreme consequences: even if he never acknowledges it, he is the only one who votes conservative (these immigrants, unlike their equivalents today, are British citizensthey have a passport and political rights). 6 Proposition 4. The last sentence in the passage quoted is a perfect embodiment of the axiom, in that it illustrates two of its terms, brevity and wit. This is an (empirical) proposition rather than a (theoretical) thesis, in so far as the merest reading of the text will induce readers to grant me this point. Problem. How can we account for the force of the last sentence of this passage? Or again, how can we show that this force has something to do with its brevity and wit? 8 Proposition 5. Classical rhetoric tells me that the last sentence of the passage is what is known in French as a chute-or 'punchline' in English-, and more specifically that this chute is a form of conceit. At this point, were not my text structurally laconic, I might risk a play on words, as Harris, being rather pleased with himself, in other words conceited, is exposed and mocked by way of a rhetorical conceit. 9 Thesis 1. The chute of the passage owes its force to its brevity. You will note that we have gone from an (empirical) proposition, which merely describes a coincidence (between the brevity of the sentence and its force) to a (theoretical) thesis, which causally links force and brevity.
18 Proposition 9. Nevertheless, Standard English is present in the passage, albeit implicitly. The vast majority of Selvon's potential readers are not familiar with Trinidad English, but all of them understand Standard English, even if their mother tongue is another dialect or another language. At this point, we may specify our problem.
19 Problem (now specified). If the decision to write in Trinidadian English (which is not the same dialect as the local creole) gives the chute its brevity and force, which amount to a form of wit, how can the clash of dialects (overt West Indian English and covert Standard English) be the cause of such brevity and wit? 20 Thesis 5. Trinidadian English allows the last sentence of our passage to convey not merely a semantic content but also an illocutionary force, which Standard English could not convey.
21 Proposition 10. In order to establish this, we need a translation of the sentence into Standard English: the only problem is that Harris's face is black.
22 Proposition 11. Were the text written in Standard English, this last sentence would be a good instance of a chute, deserving praise for its wit, and even for its brevity. However, it is obvious that the actual sentence, as we read it in the quoted passage, deserves the same praise, only to a much higher degree, just as it is obvious that, according to Thesis 1, the increase in wit is due to the increase in brevity, if I may say so. This, however, needs further justification.
of the paradigmatic axis onto the syntagmatic and the dissolution of the syntagmatic axis prevent me from forgetting the form of the utterance when I seek access to its meaning).
28 Thesis 9. The West Indian dialect has a poetic effect on the Standard dialect. This thesis suggest a solution to my problem (now specified): the clash of dialects is a form of poetic subversion of the Standard dialect by a dialect that is socially and politically dominated by other dialects. This is a case of what Deleuze and Guattari (1975) call a process of minoration (of the major dialect by the multiplicity of minor dialects). In the case of our text, such minoration takes the form of an abbreviation of the syntagmatic linkage (brevity), which animates the text (it gives it its soul) by conveying an illocutionary force and a perlocutionary effect of exhilaration (wit). With the last sentence of our quoted passage, we come as close as we possibly can to the solution of our initial problem. 32 Thesis 11. I may add that if brevity is the source of wit through an operation of interpellation (see Thesis 7), this opens the way to a philosophy of language other than the usual or mainstream one-a philosophy of language centering on the linguistic agon, in which the primary function of language is not to communicate information but to exert a force that interpellates subjects in the respective positions in which they find themselves. But it would need a whole book to establish this.
33 I am afraid my text has not kept its promise of homology between content and form, as stated in Thesis 1. Rather than adding supplementary theses, what I need at this point is another text, which will, spectacularly and definitively, illustrate the axiom. "Language is worth a thousand pounds a word" Angles, 1 | 2015